York Jessop

Are you using automatic mapping? if so try increasing the number of planes it uses I found I get better results even tho its not perfect.

Tarius Auxarmes wrote: Baloo Uriza wrote: As with every other building tool so far, it's not the tool that creates the lag. It's idiot builders who think "efficiency" was taken out of the dictionary and don't understand why fewer polygons is better. I imagine these are people who go golfing and try for the high score for basically the same reason. This exactly. Its not mesh thats the problem, its the idiots who dont know any better and in alot of cases, load stuff down way beyond whats needed. Just like the person who was using over 9000 polys for like a 20 step spiral stair mesh and over half of those were all in the railing. That thread is on the second page now and has like 6 pages if you wanna go read it. If you had read that thread yourself you would have realised that the person was asking for advice on how to reduce poly counts, to imply they are an idiot for creating an initial 'nurbs' based model is grossly unfair. We are all still learning how to make meshes and as you keep stating, PE counts reflect how efficient a mesh model is. Its up to the customers to decide what they want and its up to everyone else to decide if they want to visit said sims. Just to point out, that 9000 poly mesh staircase was reduced to 1000ish after it was converted into a poly based model and after they asked for and got alot of advice about meshes, not to mention they wouldnt have been able to import it as a nurbs models anyways as its not supported. Granted people are going to upload high poly models, and as a result will have high PE as a result but you should aim your insults at those who deserve it, not those who are trying to understand and learn about mesh.

Ah yes, the old convex hull thingy, ive said it a million times lol, why oh why is the default physics always a convex hull, it should automatically default to 'Prim' if you have nominated a physics shape imo. I've no idea how this is going to work when people use faux rezzers and the such, its going to be a pain to have to explain to everyone who buys your products that they need to manually change the physics shape.

I have no idea what could have caused that but for future reference, I would highly suggest uploading your mesh objects to the beta grid before you upload to the main grid, you will save yourself a ton of L$!

Would also like to convey my thanks to the Linden team, its been a long wait but one thats really worth it!

Josh Susanto wrote: I warned you people months ago that there had to be a downside to mesh and that the downside would almost inevitably be massive lag. Why else would LL institute a "prim equivalency" cost? Whatever. Nobody is taking seriously my current warnings about other things, and they won't care about what I warn them next, no matter how many times I turn out to be right. When most people know meshes dont cause lag in comparison to prim or scuplties then no offence but noone is going to take you seriously. As Nalates pointed out, meshes came out within the last 24 hours, the amount of mesh objects on the grid right now will be tiny and be having zero affect on lag.

Tarius Auxarmes wrote: There is one thing not many people are saying and thats that they are making mesh harder to use on purpose. See, the one thing about mesh is the fact that it has potential to replace everything on the grid and be more efficiant in doing so in many cases. They dont want it to replace everything so they are trying to limit it some by tacking on penalties and such.. I dont think this is the case, the fact that you need alot of techincal knowledge to create meshes is a large enough deterant to ensure scuplts and prims remain in use. I do however agree the high script cost is a problem, i hope they can figure out a way to properly count script weight as its currently very difficult due to the unknowns of whats in a script.

Its on the main upload window, bottom left corner

From what I understand, the physics shown in the upload window refers to the convex hull, not the 'prim'. Jira here: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/CTS-729 On the plus side, even for 1k prims that looks really good

Ahh I see, I must have read about an FBX plug in for cinema 4d then. I hope you find the tools you need in cinema 4D, I know what its like trying to use a 3D program your not used too, I had used maya a long time ago but decided to try blender as it had more SL support but I just couldnt get used to it so I went back to Maya. Also didnt know about soft/hard edges making a difference to PE (albeit not very much) but the point was the same, soft/smoothing lets you use a simplified shape to get a similiar appearance.

As Drongle mentioned, its just a shading effect so it doesnt add any more polys or make any difference to your PE. I personally use Maya so im not sure about cinema 4D or if it has an equivalent. Are you able to export .obj files from cinema 4D? If it doesnt have soft or hard edge tools, you could always import it into blender and do it from then, then reexport it as collada. EDIT: Just reading about cinema 4D, I understand it uses an FBX exporter for collada? Hate to say this but you may experience alot of problems with that, Maya has one too and I had no end of problems with it, I eventually removed it and installed the OPENCollada plug in which works flawlessly.

Inea Wemyss wrote: After reading this thread, I am starting to wonder if I have always worked backwards? :smileywink: I thought the exact same thing when Gaia mentioned she started from the top and worked down heh, theres nothing in the rule book to say you need to work that way, the reason i do is because it makes it alot easier with textures, what I found was when i started with my basic shape, then move to the next LOD to get more detail I ended up going back down again to make sure the textures were ok, it was like a yo yo effect. By working from the top down you can start with a whole and start removing or simplifying your model without losing texture faces and without having to really 'add' stuff, its way easier imo to do that.

Ah i see, the one thing I think you might find over time is that what you can create with mesh will blow its prim version out the water, in terms of looks and prim counts. Appart from modeling, texturing, LODs and physic's shapes thats all there really is to know, to be able to sucessfully import meshes, I would say your pretty much there Physics shapes are just very simple mesh models that are invisable to you, the one important thing they have to be is generally the same dimensions of your main model (height/width/depth) as when you import it it will use the bounding box of your model for its position, you know when people make scuplts, make them phantom and then use invisable prims to make the bit you can walk on? Its the same principle with meshes. On the physics tab, you can import your physics model and it will appear in the preview window, this lets you check if its positioned properly, or you also have the option to use any of the LODs as your physics shape too, this is where the benefits of custom LODs comes in again, I try to use the Low LOD as my physics shape. A good work flow would be: High LOD > Your main model Medium LOD > Your low poly version Low LOD > Your physics shape Lowest LOD > Your 'billboard' By using the above as a template this is how I go about making a mesh: 1. Create the high detailed model and texture it and save it as HighLOD 2. Using the HighLOD model, I then start stripping it out, reducing polygon counts and details until im satisfied i have a good low poly version, tweak textures if needed, then save it as MedLOD 3. Using the MedLOD as a guide, I start 'boxing' my model, as in making a super low poly version that only accounts for where I want to it to be solid, instead of having those curves I would square them off, the idea being to have the lowest possible poly count without losing the basic shape, textures dont need much tweaking at thos point as its a model that will either be something you see from far away or invisable as a physics shape, this would be saved as LowLODPHYS 4. At this point I would import all 3 LODs, and let the Lowest LOD be generated by the upload window, then I would click the physics tab and set the physics shape to use LOD and then in the drop down select use Low LOD. I would then click close edges and then analyse, to check it looked ok in the preview window. If it does then I would make sure textures is ticked in the last tab and then upload it ready for use. 4a. To create the low poly version, I would do everything in step 4 again except instead of importing the HighLOD, I would import MedLOD twice using them for both the high and medium LODs 5. Once imported and rezzed, I would right click > edit > click features tab and then change 'Convex Hull' to 'Prim' under Physics Shape Type. That will make sure its using the physics shape you uploaded. Of course I would do all of this on the beta grid first

Those triangles are the generated LODs (Level of detail) which are directly linked to your 'Object Detail' slider in the graphics settings, if you move the slider up it will show the highest LOD much quicker. LODs are in 4 stages, High, Medium, Low and Lowest, High being the model you made and imported and the last to load as you approach it. The upload window then lets you either generate the rest of the LODs (which reduces triangle counts and why your model starts looking like a bunch of triangles) or you can upload your own LODs which are basically simplified models of your main model. Basically continuing what you have done already in reducing poly counts, the benefits to this is you can control the appearance of your model much better and if you do it right you can lower the PE even more. The way it works is that your lowest LOD will count for the most in terms of PE while the highest counts for the least, the reason for this is because the lowest LOD will always render first and for the longest in most cases. Alot of people use a 'billboard' (just a flat square) for the lowest LOD as in most cases the majority of residents will only ever see it from far far away, personally i let the upload window generate the lowest LOD with the lowest amount of tri's (you can control that too) Im not sure what kind of business you run or are intending to run (do you just sell building components?) But with meshes you can control everything including your work flow and methods, to give you an example, in the house that im building im taking it in 2 parts, the first is the exterior shell, this has all 4 custom LODs but only has exterior walls and features there is nothing on the inside, the 2nd part is the interior shell, this only has the 2 highest LODs as the interior cant really be seen or needs to be seen from far away, this give me alot of control over PE counts and makes it alot easier to work on. I guess if your working on interior features like stair cases, how far a resident is ever going to be from it until its behind a wall or obstruction should be something to consider, you could in theory reduce the 2 lowest LODs to 1 triangle which should help even more with PE.

Miyo Darcy wrote: York Jessop wrote: I noticed your railings are probably taking up the majority of your poly count, it is possible to create a cylinderical appearance with a radius of 6 segments, just use soft edges. You could probably drop the poly count by 60% by doing that whilst keeping an acceptable visual look, Also I would consider squaring off the ends of your steps, its not ideal but again you could shave off another 2/3rd from the steps poly count. That was absolotly correct. I did play a bit with my railings now and reduced it from 10 sides to 5 sides which looks still great in my opinion. Not round anymore but a complete other style.. I could also use 6 as you said but I decidd for 5 now. I also did reduce polys on the middle pole and pole details. And look...I just went down from 9125 polys to 1904 polys now. That should be ok for an spiral stair case? I will check out PE now. Anyway I am so much happy that I´ve got so many feedback from you all. Thats why SL makes soooo much fun. Best community ever Glad to hear and that sounds much much better, hope the new PE is good Its a really tough question on how much PE a model should have, the one thing is if you have the prims spare you can enjoy a much higher detailed model. Its something I found myself constantly thinking about when planning my builds and it felt limiting. I decided for my first 'sellable' building to just go with the creative side rather than the technical side and I expect my first luxury home to be around 1000PE which is high, yet when I compare it to other builds ingame right now I would say it will be much much better than those 2000+PE luxury mansions you see. I may be wrong but I think the first thing a customer thinks about is the visual appeal, if they like it they will then start examining all the other aspects like PE and footprint ect and in some cases be willing to sacrifice those over looks. If you are intending to sell it, you could always create 2 versions, a HD version and a low poly version, its actually quite easy to do that once you have created your LODs, just use the medium LOD as the high LOD and create a simple low LOD to put into the missing LOD slot while using a default 2tri for the lowest one.